What Do We Think We Are Doing? A Framework for Interpreting Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience

Hosted by Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology at Boston University's Danielsen Institute

Wesley J. Wildman, a Boston University School of Theology associate professor of theology and ethics, discusses the science-based methods and the practical and intellectual purposes of studying religious and spiritual experiences in What Do We Think We Are Doing? A Framework for Interpreting Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience, the first lecture in the six-part series Religious Experiences: From the Mundane to the Anomalous at the Danielsen Institute at Boston University.

Wildman poses two basic questions: what is the point of studying religious and spiritual experiences, and what can we hope to achieve intellectually and practically? He provides a framework for comprehending religious and spiritual experiences, from physical manifestations of the experience — measured by brain studies of Buddhist meditators — to social contexts, such as how social groups condition the way those feelings are expressed. He discusses the practical purposes of these studies, among them the ability to legitimize or disprove a religion’s claims, to politically manipulate religious constituencies, or to achieve personal transformation.

Wildman provides historical context for examining the issue, ranging from the social philosophies of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber to more recent proposals for the evolutionary origins of religious and spiritual experiences. And despite the efforts of those who see no value in these experiences, such as popular writer Richard Dawkins, Wildman says, “the spiritual quests of humanity have been among the most passionate and prized pursuits in every culture and era, and that continues to be true today.”

A question-and-answer session follows the lecture.

Part of a research project at the Danielsen Institute's Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology, the series is funded by a Templeton Foundation grant from the Metanexus Institute, which administers the Templeton Research Lectures.

September 17, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
Photonics Center

Video length is 01:25:21.

About the speaker:
Wesley J. Wildman is an associate professor of theology and ethics at the Boston University School of Theology, where he directs the doctoral programs in Christian theology, in comparative theology, and in science, philosophy, and religion. Wildman has a bachelor’s in mathematics from Flinders University and a graduate degree in divinity from the University of Sydney, both in Australia. He earned a doctorate in philosophical and systematic theology and philosophy of religion from the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California. He has published more than 60 articles and the book Fidelity with Plausibility: Modest Christologies in the Twentieth Century. Wildman is the coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, as well as a collection of debates on contemporary issues in religion and science. He has studied the nature and problems of religious experience for over a decade through his involvement with the Divine Action Project at Boston University, sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, and with the Crosscultural Comparative Religious Ideas Project at BU. An ordained minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, Wildman has served churches in Sydney, Australia, and Piedmont, California.

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